Sunday, July 28, 2024

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, episode 27

     I would really like Blogger to explain to me how the [expletive deleted] it decides on URLs for our posts.  It was weird enough when it spontaneously skipped a number on these, so that episode 14's URL ended in the number 15.  But then I--silly goose that I am--tried to restore the balance between the episode numbers and the URL numbers by misspelling episode on the post title for episode 25's notes.  Result?

    Now the URL for episode 26 ends in "28."

    How?

    Why?

    HOW how how HHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW??????

    Okay, sorry about that.

    I just had to get it out of my system somehow.  (Also, it is currently 6 in the morning, when I would normally be asleep, and I just watched a very harrowing episode, and yet am going back for more because I'm a day behind if I want to finish on August 20th.)

    Rambling, incoherence and spoilers follow the read more tag.


    😭  At the end of their confrontation(?) as Wei Wuxian is leaving with the Wen remnants, he says that if he has to be killed for what he's done, he'd rather be killed by Lan Wangji than by any of them, because only that death would be worth it.  😭  The way Lan Wangji is trembling as he steps aside... 😭

    I should probably add it to the romance tally, but I don't have the strength right now.

    And a lone tear slides down his face after they're gone.  I wonder if I should keep count of how many times Lan Wangji cries in the show?  (No point in keeping track for the other characters; it's long since gone into double digits for Wei Wuxian...)  I'm quite sure he also sheds a tear or two during the Nightless City Massacre, but I can't recall off-hand if there are any other times.


    Hmm.

    The subtitles are calling the place the meeting is held "Pageant Hall."  In the book it was in Touchstone Pavilion.  Or something was held there, anyway.  Gnh.  This is clearly the same room the banquet as in.

    I wonder if I need to replace all the uses of "Touchstone Pavilion" in my fic with "Pageant Hall."


    This is a very frustrating scene.  I mean, it's supposed to be, but there's an added layer of frustration.  Most of the dialog seems to be right out of the book, but some of it's been given to different characters.  (Some of the stuff Yao-zongzhu is saying I recall as being said by Jin Guangshan.)  And also there's the fact that it has references to events that didn't happen in this version of the story.  😰

    At least if I had a well-translated blu-ray release of the show, I could skip over scenes like this and just watch the parts I enjoy.  😅  (That probably makes me a terrible person...)  I would feel weird doing that on Netflix, though.  Like, would that hurt its place in the algorithm, that kind of thing.  

    Well!  I was wrong earlier when I said they were fighting not to use Mianmian's real name in any way prior to her final appearance:  Yao-zongzhu just addressed her as Luo-guniang.

    Points for Jin Zixuan:  he seems distressed to see Mianmian withdraw from the clan, and he starts to say something to try to stop her.  (Of course, in the novel, he's off in some happy place with Jiang Yanli during all this, and Mianmian is from some unspecified smaller clan so he'd have no reason to care even if he was present.)

    Also points:  no one tried to claim Mianmian was standing up for Wei Wuxian because he had flirted with her in the past.  Possibly because no one witnessed the really flirty dialog, since it was moved to a hallway in an inn in Gusu, but possibly also because that would have made everything even more unpleasant to watch.  (What always bothered me about that in the novel was that they were all saying she was defending him (not that it was even really defending him, just pointing out that killing four people in vengeance for a specific murder they had committed was absolutely not "indiscriminate") because he had flirted with her, not that she was defending him because he took a branding iron to the chest in order to protect her from taking that same branding iron in the face.  'Cause lemme tell ya, flirting wins you very little in long-term points.  Taking a blow in someone else's place?  That's gonna win you a lot of very permanent points.)

    The look on Jiang Cheng's face as Lan Wangji is following Mianmian out of the hall is perfect.  There's part of him that's mortified that Wei Wuxian has caused such a stain to the Jiang Clan's reputation, but there's also a part of him that wants to march out along with them to defend his brother.


    Invented scene where Lan Qiren is reading Lan Wangji the riot act for going to Qiongqi Path and not stopping Wei Wuxian from leaving with the Wen remnants.  And he specifically several times mentions his worry that Lan Wangji has not learned from his father's tragedy.  The first time he mentions that, Lan Wangji starts to object, saying "My mother, she--" only to have his uncle cut him off.  But...wow.  That directly draws the comparison that Wei Wuxian is to Lan Wangji what his mother was to his father.  Which is accurate.  😅  But also a little bit problematic, witness all the people posting Youtube comments wherein they have Lan Wangji refer to Wei Wuxian as his wife.  Which it's like, no, Wei Wuxian will eventually be his husband.  There's a very big and important difference.


    Hmm.  It seems like in the drama there's no wall around the Burial Mounds to begin with?  Argh.  Yet something else I either need to change in my fic or just be like "yeah, using novel canon here because" and move on.  😰


    From the way the dialog was translated in this episode, particularly in the conversation with Jiang Cheng by the side of the bed(?) where Wen Ning is covered in a net of talismans, I don't think it's actually possible that it was in the translation process that the necromancy was removed.  There's too much of the dialog specifically dedicated to how it's not actually necromancy; if it was still necromancy, then what was that dialog about?

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